(a) The president and chancellor of each state-supported institution of higher education in Arkansas shall work with the campus faculties to develop a framework to review faculty performance, including post-tenure review. The framework should be used to develop processes and procedures at each institution to ensure a consistently high level of performance of the faculty at Arkansas' publicly supported institutions of higher education. The effects of the review process of faculty performance should include rewarding productive faculty, redirecting faculty efforts to improve or to increase productivity, and correcting instances of substandard performance. The framework developed by each institution shall be reported to the House Committee on Education and the Senate Committee on Education, the Joint Interim Oversight Committee on Education Reform, and the Department of Higher Education no later than December 1, 1998, and shall be implemented on the respective campuses no later than January 1, 2001.

(b) Pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, each state-supported institution of higher education in Arkansas shall conduct a rigorous, consistently applied, annual review of the performance of all full-time faculty members. This review shall include assessments by peers, students, and administrators and shall be utilized to ensure a consistently high level of performance and serve in conjunction with other appropriate information as a basis for decisions on promotion, salary increases, and job tenure. The evaluation by students and administrative staff, shall be applicable to all teaching faculty, full-time, part-time, and graduate teaching assistants and shall include an assessment of the fluency in English of the faculty member or graduate teaching assistant. This review shall not be used to demote a tenured faculty member to a nontenured status.

(c)

(1) Each college and university shall continually make efforts to identify any English fluency deficiencies of the teaching faculty and shall take reasonable measures to assist deficient faculty members in becoming proficient in English; however, the responsibility of acquiring the level of English proficiency required for the faculty member's teaching, research, or service assignments rests with the faculty member.

(2) Each college and university shall have a process for addressing concerns raised by students concerning language proficiency problems of faculty members.

(d) The department shall be responsible for monitoring the evaluation process and shall report its findings to the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board and to the Legislative Council by August l of each year.

(e) Each state-supported institution of higher education shall require full-time faculty members of the college of education and related disciplines to work collaboratively with the accredited public schools in this state, and such faculty involvement shall be included as part of the annual review of the faculty as required by subsection (b) of this section.